An updated catalogue of giant radio sources

TL;DR

This paper compiles a comprehensive catalogue of 349 giant radio sources, analyzing their distribution, properties, and potential for future discoveries, providing valuable data for understanding their evolution and guiding future surveys.

Contribution

It presents an updated, extensive catalogue of GRSs, including new statistical insights and identification of regions with fewer giants, aiding future research and surveys.

Findings

Significant increase in large GRSs over previous data

Identification of sky regions with fewer GRSs

Estimated lower limit of 2000 GRSs based on survey sensitivities

Abstract

We present a catalogue of 349 giant radio sources (GRSs including both galaxies and quasars). The database contains all giants known to date from the literature. These GRSs cover the redshift range of 0.016$<$z$<$3.22 and include radio sources of projected linear sizes larger than 0.7~Mpc which extend up to 4.7~Mpc. We provide the principal parameters (i.e. exact position of the host in the sky, redshift, angular and projected linear size, red optical magnitude, radio morphology type, total radio flux density and luminosity) for all the sources as well as characteristics of the sample. Based on the distribution of GRSs in the sky we identify regions where there is a paucity of giants, so that future surveys for this type of objects could concentrate primarily in these fields. From the analysis presented here, we estimate a lower limit for the expected number of GRSs as about 2000, for the resolution and sensitivity limits of FIRST, NRAO VLA Sky Survey and Sloan Digital Sky Survey surveys. Compared with earlier compilations, there is a significant increase in the number of large giants with sizes $>$ 2 Mpc as well as those at high redshifts with z$>$1. We discuss aspects of their evolution and suggest that these are consistent with evolutionary models.